Colorado Rockies: Bill Schmidt named interim general manager, replacing Jeff Bridich

The Colorado Rockies announced today that Bill Schmidt will be their new, interim General Manager. Schmidt replaces Jeff Bridich, who resigned from his post as Executive Vice President and General Manager one week ago today.

We mentioned him as one of a handful of internal possibilities that the Rockies would have to replace Bridich last week.

Schmidt, 59, has been with the Rockies organization for a long time as he first joined the organization after the 1999 season.

He originally was the Rockies scouting director after the 1999 season and he has been the team’s Vice President of Scouting since Janaury of 2007.

He has a lot of other experience with a number of titles and with a number of teams prior to joining the Rockies.

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The Rockies hired him from the Cleveland Indians organization, where he was a national crosschecker with Cleveland (and where he worked with former Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd, who was hired as Rockies GM at the tail end of the 1999 season).

Schmidt also spent time as a scout and minor league coach for the Yankees and Angels prior to joining the Indians. He also was a coach at the collegiate level as well.

Schmidt has presided over the Rockies picks in the Amateur Draft so it remains to be seen whether or not he will still preside over it (essentially, pulling double duty) or if someone will step into his old position.

With being in charge of that, Schmidt has been the guy to pull the trigger or been a key figure in drafting players like Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story, Charlie Blackmon, Matt Holliday, Ubaldo Jimenez, Troy Tulowitzki, Jon Gray, Kyle Freeland, and Jhoulys Chacin.

However, he has also presided over draft picks that did not or, at least thus far, haven’t panned out like Matt Harrington, Greg Reynolds, Riley Pint, Eddie Butler, Kyle Parker, Tyler Matzek, Christian Friedrich, Casey Weathers, Chris Nelson, Ian Stewart, and Jayson Nix.

Now, the question will be that, at the end of the season, will the Rockies decide to keep Schmidt as GM or decide to hire someone for the role outside of the organization.